A Home Like Ours by Fiona Lowe (feel good books .txt) 📕

‘Jon? He’s—’

‘Amal, who are you talking to?’ Fiza walked up the hall, her feet bare.

‘Mrs Hooper.’ Amal turned away from Tara. ‘Look what she gave me!’

‘Where are your manners! Invite Mrs Hooper inside.’

The teenager ducked as if Fiza was going to clip him on the back of the head. ‘Sorry, Mrs Hooper. Please. Come in.’

‘No. Really. It’s okay. I just wanted to return your slow cooker.’

Tara held out the bag but neither Fiza nor Amal reached to accept it. She could either lower it onto the stoop and walk away or step inside.

You have to thank her.

She crossed the threshold and almost tripped on all the shoes just inside the door. Toeing off her sandals, she followed Fiza and Amal into the kitchen that still had the original 1960s’ laminate benches and lime green tiles. Feeling out of place, Tara placed the bag on the bench and lifted out the slow cooker before resting the card and hand cream on top.

‘Thank you for the casserole. It was kind of you, but not at all necessary.’

Fiza switched on the kettle, then lifted two glasses out of the glass display cabinet above the island bench. Her silence unnerved Tara.

‘I really should get back to the children,’ she said.

‘They are safe. Your father is with them.’

Damn! Fiza could see Ian’s car from the kitchen window.

‘Father-in-law,’ Tara corrected weakly. ‘Jon’s dad. My father’s no longer alive. Or my mother.’ Shut up! You don’t have to tell her anything.

‘I am sorry for your loss.’ The words carried genuine sympathy.

‘Thank you, but it was a while ago now.’

‘This doesn’t mean you don’t miss them.’ Fiza poured tea into a glass and pushed it towards her. ‘Your husband’s father says things are difficult for you.’

It was enough that Fiza had insisted Tara come inside and drink tea. All she wanted to do was the bare minimum of polite. Discuss the weather.

‘Ian exaggerates.’

Fiza’s brows rose fast towards the band of her turban. ‘He is worried for your family.’

‘He should be more worried about his own health.’

‘Older people accept health challenges are part of ageing. But his son is a young man with a disease that will only get worse.’

A flash of anger flared from fear. ‘We don’t need your pity!’

‘You don’t have it. Pity is useless.’

The words hit Tara so hard she startled and knocked her tea. They both watched the line of amber fluid roll across the speckled bench, as if it promised them answers to impossibly difficult questions.

‘I appreciate you gave Amal a gift.’

Something about the soft way Fiza said it made Tara squirm. Guilt? Shame? In her heart, she knew she should have acknowledged their help much earlier than this.

‘It’s nothing,’ she said.

‘No! It is a lot.’ Fiza jerkily wiped a cloth across the spilled tea. ‘It means you see the truth.’

‘The truth?’

Fiza raised her gaze to Tara’s. ‘That my son is a kind and caring boy. I thank you for that.’

But the compliment sat like a stone in Tara’s gut, rubbing against the sharp edges of long-held beliefs.

The following day, Tara’s thoughts were still a jumbled mess as she pulled a wagon filled with punnets of seedlings down to Helen’s cottage. Given the last time she and Helen had talked it had hardly been cordial, she wasn’t certain of her reception. But during this morning’s stocktake of the garden section, she’d immediately thought of the community garden.

You’re really thinking of Fiza not Helen.

It was true. The night before, all through dinner, then Uno Attack and supervising the bedtime routine, Tara kept hearing her neighbour’s words—it means you see the truth. What truth?

She couldn’t shift the question, so when everyone was finally in bed and she had some time to herself, she’d googled Sudan. According to Wikipedia, it was in north-eastern Africa, bordered by Egypt, Libya, Chad, the Central African Republic, Ethiopia, Eritrea, the Red Sea and South Sudan. That was news to her. She’d thought South Sudan was just a geographical reference. She’d never even heard of the Central African Republic, and the little she knew about Eritrea and Ethiopia she’d learned years ago from watching a horrifying World Vision documentary about starving children.

She’d scrolled past the prehistoric information and read about the Egyptian then British rule in Sudan and how they’d administered the north and south separately. How the north was predominantly Muslim and the south Christian and Animist, and how the country had been ravaged by drought, floods and civil war, and the enormous numbers of displaced persons in and outside the country.

She’d just started reading that the legal system in Sudan was based on Islamic Sharia law when Clemmie wandered out, rubbing her eyes and wanting a glass of water and a cuddle. This was a nightly occurrence since Jon’s diagnosis and Tara was on alert for other signs of stress in the children. By the time she’d resettled Clemmie, it was late and she’d tumbled exhausted into bed.

Now, standing in front of the deserted cottage, she was struck by its air of ennui. ‘Has Helen moved?’ she asked one of the Hazara women she recognised from the morning tea weeks earlier.

‘She lives with Jade now.’

Tara momentarily considered leaving the plants with the women. They certainly knew how to grow things—their beds were lush with herbs and vegetables. But for reasons she didn’t fully wish to acknowledge, she wanted to give the plants directly to Helen.

As soon as she walked through the decorative gates of the community garden, Judith rushed over.

‘Tara! You poor girl! Ian told me. And the children are so young. What a tragic thing to happen to you all. I can’t imagine …’

Tara stiffened in the woman’s unwelcome embrace. As word trickled out around town about Jon’s Parkinson’s, people’s reactions to the news seemed to fall into one of two camps. They either completely ignored it or were overly dramatic with cloying sympathy. She got a sudden flash of Fiza’s proud face. Pity is useless.

Extricating herself from the hug, Tara straightened her